The DailyBrief

Property prices barely moved in China in December 2016 as cooling measures in the overheated housing market took grip, writes Steve Wang. On average, tier-one cities saw prices at a standstill in December, compared with a 0.1% month-on-month gain during the previous month. Lower-tiered cities saw gains halved from November, with a 0.2% and 0.4% increase for tier two and tier three cities in December, respectively.
READ STEVE WANG’S STORY HERE

A day after China’s President Xi Jinping gave his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos championing globalization, the East Wind was due in London, bearing not only low-cost trinkets but the Chinese government’s high hopes for its New Silk Roads project. After a 12,000km journey from Yiwu in eastern Zhejiang province, Richard Cook reports that the 34-wagon train carries more than just goods.
READ RICHARD COOK’S STORY HERE

On a lighter note, the Indian city of Rajasthan will host the 10th anniversary of the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, which starts on Thursday. Victoria Burrows reports that since its debut, the festival has hosted 1,300 speakers and welcomed nearly 1.2 million book lovers, and it has become the world’s largest free, unticketed event of its kind. Eka Kurniawan, the first native Indonesian to be nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, Lebanese-American statistician and writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and Irish film-maker Neil Jordan are among the guests.
READ VICTORIA BURROWS’ STORY HERE